A Poem On Death
What is it about death that can be so scary?
Perhaps it’s the loss of control.
In the world it seems you can control what you do,
but death makes you let all of that go.
We can make plans for where we will be in five years,
like our destiny is in our hands.
But the moment the body goes back to the Earth,
is probably not in your plans.
The illusion is that you can pick or choose,
like the world's in your personal power.
But dying destroys the entire illusion,
and forces you to retire.
Perhaps it exposes our arrogance,
of believing that we control life.
We have a few years, a few million breaths,
then death comes to end all our strife.
So many things seem under control,
we can manage them, hold them together,
ignoring and scared that our very own deaths,
can not be controlled or made better.
It requires letting go, a surrender to life,
realising you can no longer fight.
When death comes along, in the day or the night,
letting burdens all burn in the light.
Perhaps it is like playing outside as a child,
running in the rain and the wind.
The parents call you from back home where it’s safe,
but you refuse to want to go in.
The feeling of being an individual,
a person with autonomy,
gets destroyed by something called death that seems
to happen to all that we see.
You can’t keep your old identity alive
if you lose possession of your body,
no more "me", no more "you",
no more collection of stories.
Straight after birth, the identity comes,
an identity you are told to hold dear.
What does death do but remove the self
that was purely made up of ideas?
An idea of self, everybody is trained
to hold on to, keep and protect.
For the first time in life, perhaps it scares
to not have a clue what comes next.
But this is all gibberish, mere speculation,
discussing what can’t be discussed.
After writing a piece of writing like this,
I just feel like shutting the f**k up.
- Adam Oakley
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